Bowdoin College to Honor Journalist, Nurse, Economist at May Commencement

Three lives shaped by accountability, care, and public service will be recognized on the steps of Bowdoin College's Walker Art Building this spring, when the Brunswick institution confers honorary degrees at its 221st Commencement exercises on Saturday, May 23.

The honorees are Sharon Daley, a registered nurse who spent more than two decades delivering healthcare to Maine's most isolated island communities; Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter and Bowdoin class of 2014 alumnus whose career became an international symbol of press freedom; and Cecilia Elena Rouse, an economist who chaired the White House Council of Economic Advisers and now leads the Brookings Institution.

Daley's work represents perhaps the most distinctly Maine story of the three. For twenty-two years, she served as the Maine Seacoast Mission's director of island health and nurse on the Sunbeam, the mission's seventy-four-foot boat, until her retirement in December 2022. The mission, as Bowdoin describes it, is "a long-standing nonprofit that supports the state's remote coastal communities and islands by focusing on health care, youth education, fighting food insecurity, improving housing, and fostering community connections." Daley now serves as board vice president of The Beacon Project, an Islesboro eldercare nonprofit that runs the assisted living home Boardman Cottage.

Gershkovich was detained by Russia's Federal Security Service on charges of espionage in March 2023, marking the first time a journalist working for an American outlet had been arrested on charges of spying in Russia since the Cold War. At Bowdoin, he majored in philosophy and English, wrote for The Bowdoin Orient and The Bowdoin Review, and disc jockeyed for WBOR, the campus radio station. On July 19, 2024, Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being convicted in an espionage trial, then released on August 1, 2024, as part of a prisoner exchange. Bowdoin has remained closely connected to his story throughout, rallying faculty, students, and Maine's congressional delegation during his detention.

Rouse is currently president of the Brookings Institution and served as the 30th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers between 2021 and 2023, becoming the first Black American to hold that position. While at Princeton, she also served as dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs from 2012 to 2021.

The ceremony will take place outdoors on the steps of the Walker Art Building, the same neoclassical landmark that has anchored Bowdoin's commencement tradition for generations. No details about the specific honorary degree titles or whether any of the three will deliver a commencement address have been announced. Bowdoin can be reached at (207) 725-3000 for additional information.